The first step in making peace is to decide to stop fighting. The second step is to show good will. We are really showing our unwillingness to do so in so many ways that you have to wonder, really wonder, if we -- and by we, I mean our (mis)leaders -- are just totally batshit stupid or they really are trying to create a world impossible for the future. Tin-eared, ignorant and brain-dead...actually, it seems like when alive Terry Schiavo was a nice person. Maybe we should have made her president...
President Ahdajamaneianxaizxz or whatever the hell his name is, the crazed fanatic leader of Iran wants to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center, and somebody doesn't want to let him. From the AP,
The Iranian president, who is arriving Sunday to address the United Nations' General Assembly, had asked the police department, the U.S. Secret Service and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey earlier this month for permission to visit the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police spokesman Paul Browne said. The police and Secret Service provide security to visiting heads of state.
The request to enter the fenced-in site was rejected because of ongoing construction there, Browne said. "Requests for the Iranian president to visit the immediate area would also be opposed by the NYPD on security grounds," Browne said. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said earlier Wednesday that the city was considering Ahmadinejad's request, but Browne said about two hours later that Kelly had misspoke. The Port Authority, which owns the trade center site and is the only agency that could grant Ahmadinejad permission to go inside, said it never received such a request, contradicting the police statement.
Raymond Kelly is a very straight-shooting police commissioner. He doesn't misspeak. If the chief was still Kerik, well, we'd know that he was just babbling because the feed directly from Rudy's sphincter was disrupted. Somebody doesn't want any steps -- potential, illusory, or real -- toward reconciliation and achievement of communication, conflict resolution and peace in the middle east. We know this guy Alphabet is batshit, a madman and a fanatic -- so, where's the downside for us? The NYPD and PA could easily protect him; this is purely nonsense. So he lays a wreath memorializing the hi-jackers! Massive propaganda victory for us. He does the right thing by us -- win/win. The only way we lose is to not let him show his respects. Since every tinpot idiot leader that Rudy could dragoon into visiting New York so he could show what a leader he was has shown up there, Alphabet would be pretty safe. Hell, Putin went there! The Chechens are seriously interested in waxing his ivory white ass, and he was safe.
Then there's this gem: the Senate has blocked Jim Webb's bill to require as much time out of combat as in for the troops. The bill failed by four votes and for some reason is being trumpeted as a defeat for the Democrats. The media needs to read the constitution and the rules of the Senate. This isn't a defeat, if it is used to show how we need to get a new majority in the Senate in about 16 months it's a great tool. "We did what we could, voters! It's up to you to give us a veto-proof majority to prevent this obstructionist crap." Of course, Harry Reid could do the old nuclear option beloved by Bill Frist, but that would be incredibly stupid and a defeat -- for Democracy.
Then, there's OJ. Who the fuck cares? He's a sleeze, the guys he went with were sleezes, the guys he went to were sleezes. Does the Clark County DA really need the publicity? The whole equal protection under the law thing is critical, despite what the Bush administration thinks. Keeping him in the can because "he's a flight risk" is incredibly stupid. The slow chase beloved of satirists everywhere was panic-induced nonsense. Do I think he murdered those two sleezy people? Of course he did. The jury found reasonable doubt -- since we do not test jurors for reason, that seems reasonable. We live with it -- bad facts make bad law, and we don't want OJ's obviously minor escapades to screw up the pretense that we are still a constitutional government of laws, not men or celebrities. Again from the AP, we find it in a nutshell...
"But as Simpson made his $125,000 bail on charges including kidnapping and armed robbery, legal experts were questioning: Could a former football star who beat a double-murder rap really do hard time for a crime that sounds like a bad movie? Police have laid out a case that makes Simpson the leader in a tense, armed holdup of sports memorabilia collectors. Some of the facts - including a curious recording of the confrontation - don't seem so clear-cut. Legal experts say that issues such as who had rightful ownership of the goods and the reputation of witnesses in the sometimes less-than-reputable world of memorabilia trading could the cloud prosecution's case."
Seriously, if this was Joe Dirt and some trailer trash arguing over who gets Uncle Clem's false teeth, they'd have confiscated the guns and charged them all with disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct. Well, it is the moral and spiritual equivalent of Joe and the TT, except that comparison is unfair to trailer trash, the underclass and the lumpenprolitariat in so many ways that I apologize to...hell, I don't know, Karl Marx? Grouch Marx? Britney Spears? Somebody...
dude, then someone might snap a picture of one of 'our guys' shaking hands with Ahnomoapaeodijerydue and use it against us when we invade in the upcoming years.
wait.
Posted by: mr.fundamental | 19 September 2007 at 05:48 PM
It's just so freaking depressing that the US (mis)leadership (thanks for that - I love it!) has the ethics of a grade-school bully. Not even a junior-high school bully is as intransigent, stiff-necked, and utterly unable to see anyone's point of view but their own, or feel such a total sense of self-righteous superiority as these buffoons. HOW DID IT HAPPEN???? We must have had adult supervision at some point.
Posted by: Marmoset | 20 September 2007 at 06:31 AM
It's amazing how good people like Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover can look in retrospect. Woodrow Wilson was kind of a protestant saint when I was in Catholic high school and grade school over the League of Nations. However, he accomplished nothing and set the stage for international meltdown and WWII and everything that followed by his intransigence and alliance with Clemenceau. I guess unlike the current idiot, Dipshit de Twit, his domestic policy wasn't totally screwed up despite his deep nostalgia for the Confederacy and racism; in terms of international affairs, he was a total disaster.
Posted by: Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes | 20 September 2007 at 01:10 PM